


of a foreign war

by roadhymns



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-26 09:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14998133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadhymns/pseuds/roadhymns
Summary: “I believe each one of us has a destiny,” he tells her. “And I think ours may be intertwined.”





	of a foreign war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Witchy1ness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witchy1ness/gifts).



> For the prompts "Alexander Vinciguerra/Victoria Vinciguerra," "self-reflection," and "she indulges him." Happy solstice, witchy1ness!

She meets Alexander Vinciguerra while on holiday in Sardinia, at a regatta. He is bronzed and glowing in the Mediterranean midday, leaning against the railing of his father’s yacht with a spritz in his hand; she is opposite him across a pier, having just stepped out onto the deck of her host’s own vessel.

He gives her an obvious once-over from above the rims of his sunglasses. “ _Ciao, bella,_ ” he calls over to her solicitously, as every second man has since she set foot on Italian soil.

“Hello,” she says dismissively, making to circle to the other side of the deck.

“English?” he adds quickly, with significantly more interest, and she half-turns, an eyebrow arching. “You want a drink?” he asks, waggling the glass he is holding in her direction.

He must be close to her own age, exceedingly handsome, likely wealthy. There are worse options. “Must I share, or will I have my own?” she asks, sly.

His mouth curls, pleased just to be flirted back with. “Beautiful,” he tells her, “you will have anything you want from me, if you come over and talk.”

She gets her own drink, and then a second, and she skips all of the races that afternoon in lieu of lounging in his bed and letting him put his mouth on every inch of her body.

\--

That may well have been that, a holiday fling, had she not met Sergio Vinciguerra at supper that evening. The man has a rougher way of speaking than his son, a strong indicator of the _nouveau riche_ , but then she knows that the wars had rather shook things up here on the continent.

Her host provides a little more enlightenment about the Vinciguerras’ past, a few tantalizing details dropped to her _sotto voce_ throughout the late-night supper. Her own father made his play at profiteering, but proved to be mediocre at best, and the addition to the family wealth was far too modest for her ambitions. If nothing else, perhaps she can learn something from the old man.

By the end of the night, she has been invited to spend the next portion of her holiday at their estate outside of Rome, only a few hours’ journey from their private island, and she sips her _ammazzacaffè_ and says yes.

\--

She stays on that private island for two months, drinking prosecco and fucking Alexander and noting the ships that come and go from the harbor with a little more care than she is likely meant to.

The days are unmistakably lazy, but still it feels like it might be building toward something, and eventually she is proved right.

“I believe each one of us has a destiny,” Alexander tells her. He is naked and standing just inside the open doors that lead out to the balcony, the morning sun behind him haloing his edges. He is, she must admit, very beautiful. “And I think ours may be intertwined.”

“Oh?” she asks, still sprawled in bed.

“We are well-suited to each other,” he tells her. “I have too much responsibility, and you not nearly enough, don’t you think?”

Victoria hums.

“What do you think of the island, my love?” he asks her.

“It’s charming,” she tells him. “And in a prime location to smuggle various goods to and from the mainland, which I believe your father already knows.”

He comes and sits on the edge of the bed. “I would like to make our arrangement a little more permanent,” he tells her.

“Is that a proposal?” she asks.

“A business proposal,” he says, like the charmer he is. “But marriage too, yes.”

“And what responsibility do I get to have, if I agree to this?”

“All of it,” he tells her, smiling with his white, straight teeth. “You will have all of it that’s mine to give.”

\--

London, after a season in the Mediterranean, feels like a rude awakening. Alexander has gone with his father to South America; she has told no one of the engagement.

Two months after she returns, she meets some tall and well-formed man at a party, with slate-grey eyes and a title after his name, and she takes him to bed.

Three weeks after that, Alexander arrives in the city and introduces himself as her fiance to more people than she would strictly prefer, and it quickly becomes clear that she will need to own her indiscretion, before it can be relayed by someone else.

She tells him at dinner in Mayfair, in as bored a tone as possible. She is not apologetic, because she has promised him nothing. She does not promise to never do it again, because she very well may, if someone catches her eye.

Alexander ponders this a moment, as their dishes are whisked away in preparation for the next course. “Did you want to call off the wedding?” he asks, at last.

Victoria hums, non-committal. “Does indiscretion matter to you?”

“Far less than your genius matters to me. Does it matter to you?”

Ah. She narrows her eyes at him. “My own?”

Alexander smiles at that, a crooked little thing. “I still think we are well-suited to each other,” he tells her. “Why limit oneself from pleasure, just for the sake of ceremony?”

For the space of a moment, she contemplates being stung, scorned, furious. She is not above a double-standard, to gain leverage.

“My love,” he says, at her silence.

“What a wonderfully modern proposition,” she says at last, leaning back into the booth where they’re sitting.

He leans forward in turn, takes her hand in his, and raises it to his lips.

\--

She goes back with Alexander to Rome, and they set the date for the wedding. It will be the event of the season; there are royals on the guestlist, and what seems like every major businessman in western Europe.

The night before the ceremony, she is summoned to Sergio’s study.

“Victoria,” he says, standing, and she leans over the edge of his desk to kiss his cheeks. They make small talk about the wedding for a few minutes - last minute preparations, tensions between certain factions of guests - before he turns contemplative.

“My wife, Maria,” he says, handing her a framed photo of what seems to be his own wedding, a much smaller and meaner affair. “Alexander takes after her; she was also a little soft. After she died, I overindulged him, I know this. But isn’t that what every father wants? To give his children the world? To let them live untouched by the filth of it?”

Victoria sets the photo down on his desk. “I suppose so,” she says.

Sergio looks at her. He has a jovial face, creased with laughter lines, but his eyes are quick and sharp and cold. “I love my son,” he tells her. “But the best thing he has ever done in his life is bring me you.”

The next afternoon, they kneel before the priest for the interminably long ceremony, and she lets her mind wander from the stodgy Latin and the heavy veil and the ache in her knees, to think about what she is doing.

She knows what their future will be: Alexander will hand her the reins of a minor empire after his father passes, and she will let him race his cars and fuck his ingenues.

Does she hold Alexander in the same contempt that his father does? She searches her feelings on the matter, but before she finishes, the priest signals to them to rise, and that’s the end of that.

\--

Two years into her marriage to his son, one day Sergio Vinciguerra is alive and well, and the next, he is not. All of the ill-gotten gold in the world cannot reverse an aneurysm.

And just like that, she has all of everything that is Alexander’s to give.

\--

Her ambitions outstrip his by an order of magnitude, which they both knew going in. What she did not know, going in, was how much of a respite his lower ambitions would provide her.

She has been on the phone most of the day, arranging the kidnapping of a German rocket scientist from an American enclave, moving pieces around on an international board, a larger scheme slowly taking shape.

Afterward, she fixes herself a drink and goes to find Alexander, to see what has been keeping him busy today.

She finds him in the garages with his newest racing car, glossy blue and white like an automotive confection, fine-tuned for aesthetic and specialized purpose until it resembles its ancestors no more than a dachshund does a wolf.

“What do you think?” he asks, watching someone else polish it.

“Beautiful, my love,” she tells him, because it is, and he is. “How fast does this one go?”

And then, of course, he must show her, and they whip through the countryside at speeds reckless and exhilarating, and afterward she takes him to bed and has her way with him.

She must get up and make more calls, infinite calls and infinite orders, because the world won’t bend to her of its own volition while she relaxes in bed. But for a long few minutes after he drops off to sleep, she stays there to watch him - perfectly satisfied to be wealthy and beautiful, content with a well-tuned engine and a lengthy fuck. It soothes her, in its way, that she can give him this life.

“We _are_ well-suited,” she says, and he sleeps on.

\--

The party for the anniversary of the company is days away; everything is coming together nicely. The staff has been paid, the accomodations arranged, the racers brought in from around the continent. There will be more to do tomorrow, of course, but for tonight, she is enjoying the warm evening breeze rolling off the ocean.

Alexander puts a record on in the bedroom behind her, then steps out onto the balcony with her and pulls her to her feet.

A hundred feet below them, two missiles are sitting, nearly complete but for a few “unforeseen problems.”

“I have to go back to the mainland tomorrow,” she tells Alexander, as he puts his hands on her hips. “Try not to let Dr. Teller blow up the island and kill everyone while I’m gone.”

“You would make a lovely widow,” Alexander says contemplatively, swaying them both to the music.

She looks up and away, fighting the curl starting at the edges of her mouth. “I think you would lose most of your charm as a corpse,” she tells him, dry.

He takes the opportunity to lean in and brush his lips to her exposed neck; his hair tickles against her jaw. “Would you wear black for me, my love?” he asks, his breath warm on her skin.

 _My love,_ she thinks. _My love_ \- when had it stopped being empty? When had it gained some fondness? When had he become more than a means to her own ends?

 _I would burn the world down for you,_ she does not tell him.

“A week,” she says, watching the way the water catches the moonlight and pitching her tone toward bored, just to hear him laugh. “A week, and no more.”


End file.
